What the England game taught me about storytelling for social media
I'm not a football fan. Neither is my daughter.
And yet last night, we were both sat on the sofa, absolutely gripped - leaping around the room when England scored, fists clenched through the entire 90-odd minutes, my phone buzzing every few minutes with photos from friends and family doing exactly the same thing in their own living rooms.
The more invested my daughter and I became, the more I found myself wondering: why do we care about this so much?
Because honestly, the result changes nothing for us personally. Whether England win or lose has zero impact on my day-to-day life, or my daughter's. And yet there we were, glued to the screen like it really mattered to us.
By the time I collapsed into bed, exhausted (and yes, disappointed), I'd worked out what was actually going on - and it had nothing to do with football at all.
It was never about the game
This morning, my daughter walked into her classroom already knowing exactly what everyone would be talking about. I got the same at school drop-off.
"Did you watch the game last night?" isn't really a question about football. It's an invitation. A way of saying I felt this too - did you?
We weren't bonded by football. We were bonded by having lived through the same moment, at the same time, and now having something to say about it to each other.
That's the exact mechanism behind good storytelling for social media - and it's why the best-performing content rarely comes from the "biggest" news or the most polished production. It comes from moments people recognise.
Why storytelling works so well on social media
The moment itself is rarely the point. What matters is what it gives people to talk about.
When someone reads a post from you and thinks yes, I've felt that too, you're not just being "relatable" in a vague, buzzword sense. You're doing the same thing thousands of England fans did to each other last night - creating a shared moment. And shared moments are what turn a passive audience into an actual community.
This is the gap a lot of founders fall into with their content. They assume storytelling means having something dramatic or unique to say - a big turning point, a rags-to-riches arc, a "moment" worth writing home about. In reality, the most connective stories are usually the small, ordinary ones: the client comment that meant the world, that thing on the school-run that wouldn't leave your head, the moment something clicked for you.
A simple way to start spotting your own stories
If you want to start finding these moments in your own week, here's a simple activity to try: next time something sticks with you, don't just note what happened. Ask yourself why it stuck.
What you were feeling in that moment is very often the same thing your audience is feeling too - and that's usually where the real story is hiding, waiting to be shaped into a post.
It sounds almost too simple, but most people skip this step entirely. They either overthink their content ("I need something impressive to post about") or underthink it ("nothing interesting happened to me today"). The truth is somewhere in between - you don't need a big moment, you need to notice the ordinary ones properly. And then share them in a way that will land with your audience.
Turning moments into content, consistently
Spotting a moment is one thing. Turning it into a post that actually builds connection, week after week, is another - especially during busy periods like the summer holidays when content is often the first thing to slip.
That's exactly the gap Summer Story Spark was built to close. It's a digital workbook that walks you through a clear, repeatable framework for taking the small moments already happening in your week and shaping them into social media posts that sound like you and build real connection with your audience - not vague "be more authentic" advice, but an actual step-by-step method.
It's £19 until 18th July - when it returns to its full price of £29.